Maybe this is just my perception. And maybe I am totally and completely wrong here. But I think the phenomenon is fading quickly. I don’t hear nearly the buzz about MySpace that I did a year ago, and definitely not the fever pitch of 6 months ago.
I have a theory about the end of this site. (Not that it will die… I’m sure it will be profitable for years to come. I’m just talking about this perception that youth culture is abandoning the site.) As more adults became aware of the site, and as more companies began to invest in this "emerging market" the people they were reaching fled to somewhere less known.
See, the thing that students liked is that it was "MySpace" and not "YourSpace." It was a place that adolescents could hide and share their emotions free from parents, teachers, and prying youth pastors like me.
As soon as that false sense of "my space" was gone… the site started to be adult space and not adolescent space. So, they are leaving… The quickest way to make something "uncool" to students is to fill it with old people trying to be cool and one more place where companies are making money off of them, they check out.
Experts say that this generation of students is looking for something that is authentic. When myspace was an underground thing, it was real. Now that it’s loaded full of major companies and oodles of adults, it’s not authentic to them anymore.
I could also be wrong. Been wrong before. But the new student site… it’s not facebook… it’s… well, I can’t tell anyone.
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